Mutant And Proud
by DeathFrisbee221
Summary: A young mutant is caught in the crossfire of an invisible battle between mutants and humans, whilst the threat of World War Three only makes the boundary between the two species all the more prominent. She can either take her chances on her own, battling for survival in a society that no longer wants her or her kind, or accept an offer made by the mysterious Charles Xavier...
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: Had to re-upload due to the fact that the document that I uploaded originally was glitching like crazy, and replacing my story with lines of meaningless code. Grrr! Anyway, I hope you enjoy now that I've finally got it up - read, review, you know the drill!**

No one ever said to me that being a mutant was going to be easy.

But then again, no one talked about being a mutant at all.

It wasn't a topic of discussion one could easily spark amongst friends, or with parents across the dining table. _Hey, mum, check it out, I'm officially a freak of nature!_ And the stories only made it worse, rumours whispered at night when eyes were closed and ears wide open of people who weren't really people at all, but monsters clothed in human skin and walking among us, just waiting to strike. And the more it looked like something big was going to kick off between the Americans and the Russians, the more horrific the stories became, as if people needed some sort of supernatural force beyond their tiny comprehension to ladle all their fear and mindless rage upon, a distant force that they could blame without any sort of recompense for their actions.

To me, the stories meant something different. They were tales of hope and excitement that reminded me that there were others out there just like me, people with whom I felt this instant, irresistible affinity though our shared gifts, our _mutations_. As the stories spread, so did my mental network; in my mind, a golden mesh of threads was stretched in a glorious tangle over the world, a filigree of strings as delicate as our own twisted DNA that one day we could follow, hauling ourselves hand over hand until we collided with others who understood, fellow beings alongside which we might finally feel safe in a world that simply wasn't constructed for us to inhabit.

Hope comes hand in hand with fear, as did the stories with the single thing that scared me most, drove me to tears in the middle of the night, was the single look of disgust and fear and _revulsion_ in people's eyes, like we were something wrong that should be exterminated with the moral ease of rats or weeds. Remove the roots so they don't come back. A look that I was forced to replicate behind my own eyes so as to blend in as seamlessly as possible. It took me years to understand why we warranted such hatred when in essence we were the same, until it finally dawned on me one day through my own fear of eventual discovery, that it was their own terror of the unknown and unpredictable that drove them to such lengths.

You heard whispers that gathered in the corners of the playground, kids swapping tales about mutants who had been found, and taken away by the police never to return. Once, the word in school was that a body had been found in the early hours of the morning, mutilated beyond recognition, but clearly with scales instead of skin. I put it down to silly fantasies conjured in the minds of bored children that had inflated beyond their control, but whenever the word _mutant_ could be heard, it sent a chill down my spine, as bad news was sure to follow suit.

I was one of the lucky ones. My mutation was invisible, and I took full advantage to conceal it from the world as soon as I knew how, and why. The sooner I learned to control it, the better, and thankfully I was a fast learner. But even now I could still lose control on odd occasions; I was all too aware of how volatile I was, a ticking time bomb just waiting to erupt, made all the more potent by so many years of dormancy. And losing my head now would be far worse - the older I grew, the more powerful I became, and the last thing I needed was to be unveiled as a freak in the midst of a society hungry for blood.

So naturally, that's exactly what happened.


	2. Chapter 2

**Just a brief warning of some mild violence with some implied sexual themes - other than that, enjoy!**

School was a daily nightmare. Being the way I was, I found it easiest to keep my head down, work quietly, and leave the talking to other people. Not only was making friends exhausting, but it was also dangerous. They got too close, too personal, and I couldn't afford to let a thing slip. Not that I was particularly abnormal at home – I had friendly parents, two older siblings who I got on surprisingly well with, even a dog. Average house, average car, and on the front of it, an average life. But seeing everything from a perspective that was possibly alien to everyone else's was unnerving. What if some detail I thought normal was completely abstract and even threatening to another? What if that one thing led to a bigger mistake, and then another, until my secret lay unravelled for all to see and judge? It was too big a risk for me to take, especially considering how fraught the moment was, how it balanced on a knife's edge ready to plunge into chaos.

So I was good. Worked hard, took up very little space in class or in the minds of the teachers, kept my mouth stolidly shut in the face of taunts and mockery. And there was a lot of that; being quiet had the advantage of rendering you invisible without the aid of a mutation, but outside stood amongst your own classmates it only had the effect of making you stand out with painful clarity.

_Loner, weirdo, mute, oddball, lockjaw_. The names became familiar after a while, something I could greet with a weary acceptance, an identity I could slide into. Admittedly, through taking the brunt of the attack in meek silence, I'd expected my peers to get bored and leave me for some other poor soul, but if anything the abuse only got worse. It was like my reluctance to talk was a challenge, a blazing red flag to a bull. They would go further and further in their attempts to pierce my well-worn armour, and yet every time they would admit defeat with a sullen chagrin that would leave me glowing inside despite the fresh set of bruises.

And so it continued well into my teens. It was merely a routine to me now, and one that I unwillingly stuck to as the bullies got bigger, and the threats got meaner. Sometimes I would bite back, just to release a tiny scrap of all that pent up frustration, easing the pressure a little in the constant fear that one day I might explode, and my set life with it. And sometimes, on rare sunny days, it would work. Either way, I was, in a strange way, relieved for the cover the never-ending abuse lent to me, how being singled out as a loner somehow protected me from the dreaded classification of _mutant_.

Today was the day that all ended. I'm not sure why today of all days was the one in particular when I finally let go. It had been pretty average, with lessons in the morning running like clockwork, the ritual handing in of homework, a lunchtime sat alone behind a propped up book. Admittedly lunchtime had been quieter than usual, and people had seemed filled with a fervent electricity, a restlessness that spread through the canteen with a near-tangible intensity; doubtless some new nugget of gossip had been thrown to the hungry rabble, and I would have bet my every last penny that yet another mutant had been caught in the headlights. Poor bastard. Either way, I basked in the luxury of an hour all to myself, empty of the repetitive taunts and name-calling I'd been anticipating from over my shoulder.

The end of school, however, hadn't run quite as smoothly.

The moment I heard the hurried patter of footsteps behind me, I knew what was coming, and steeled myself, hastily bottling my stewing emotions in a steel box and plastering a look of blank indifference across my face that mustn't crack, no matter how hard they hit me.

The first blow was always the worst, sending me sprawling to the ground with all the air spent from my lungs. I gaped silently in an attempt to draw breath, scrabbling uselessly at the ground even though I knew there was no point in trying. I couldn't see how many there were with my face pressed into the tarmac; I would have guessed maybe a gang of five or six. That was the usual number.

A foot rammed into my side, hard, then again. By allowing myself to go limp, the worst of the pain was evaded, but it still drew an involuntary groan from the back of my throat. A hand twisted into my hair and yanked my head backwards so that I was forced to stare helplessly into a pair of sadistic blue eyes.

"Loner."

"Weirdo."

"Lockjaw."

"_Nobody_."

Inwardly, I sighed and sat back with arms folded, patiently waiting for the end that was sure to come. Externally, I remained a cold porcelain doll. Soon they would give up. More kicks were dealt; I was aware of my bag being torn from my back and beyond my sight being ripped and dirtied. Someone eagerly twisted my arm, so far and with such zeal I was surprised it didn't snap. Dimly I was aware of the low moans of pain such acts provoked, but it was like it was no longer my own body; I hovered above with my gaze fixed on the sky in a seemingly timeless world of my own where everything was shrouded in fog and glittering smoke. My skull held an infinity of possibility and creation, and it was my single most refuge, the peak that no one dared scale.

Eventually, the blows fell slower, and then came to a stop. I could barely feel my sides for the dizzying pain, and yet I remained motionless. My hair was released, my face thrown into the dirt with disgust. I drew a wheezy breath, half gasp of pain, but as my lips curled, half laugh. Distantly I heard myself whisper with unmistakable sarcasm, "Are we done here?"

A hand grabbed my shoulder and roughly threw me onto my back so that I was staring upwards into the faces of a group of guys about my age, perhaps four or five of them. _I knew it_. One of them crouched over me, the one with those dead blue eyes, only now they were laughing in a way that made my scalp prickle with dread. "You tell me, sweetheart," he rasped.

And then before I knew it, he had grabbed my face in one of his meaty hands, and forced my mouth to his.

This was new.

_ Get off. Get off, get off, get off._ I tried to pull back with a mixture of shock and utter revulsion, but his friends were all around me, hands seizing my coat and hair, eager voices egging him on, laughing and leering as I struggled to break free. No one had been this close. No one. And no one had the right to ever be this close, to ever _touch_ me as he was doing now. His hand was on my waist and travelling even lower, and all I wanted was for him to stop it, stop it _right now_. I wriggled, clawed frantically, bucking and juddering against iron-clad hands like a rabbit caught in a snare, but he only mashed his face further into mine.

And suddenly there was so much rage contained inside my head, so much pure anger and hatred seething within my skull so that I felt that I might burst. Heat raced through my blood, a fire that I hadn't felt in years, that I hadn't allowed myself to feel in my pretence of being normal. But now this _monster_ had crossed a line, was touching me in ways that left me feeling exposed and violated, like my skin had been torn away for my very soul to be gawped at from between the ribs of its bone cage. So perhaps this once I was at liberties to cross my very own line.

Red blotches swam before my vision as I pulled back furiously, lashing out in any way possible much to the amusement of my audience. My skin grew warm, then hot, then _boiling_, thrumming with energy, the hairs along my arms rippling from the magnitude of it, far stronger than I could have possibly apprehended. All those years of isolation, of bullies and close-minded simpletons who had decided that the weak were to be their playthings. Only problem was, that they had picked the wrong victim. They had chosen someone who was _strong_.

For a moment I was enveloped in calm authority. And then I let go.

A wall of crackling blue, the distant ring of screaming in my ears, a warm tingle that played over my skin as the remaining energy fizzled and dissolved, melting back into the nothingness from which it had erupted.

Then... silence.

Slowly, I squinted through one eye, blinking hard in an attempt to see through the bright after-image tattooed on the backs of my eyelids. After a brief pause, I was able to sit up, and dazedly take in my surroundings.

Everything within several feet of me was charred and smoking. The boys had been thrown outside of my melted perimeter, and lay motionless, a few rolling over onto their sides to cough fitfully, or cry out in pain. Their ringleader's face was puffy and blistered, having borne the brunt of the attack, pus oozing from the more severe of the burns. At this distance, I thought – hoped, even - that perhaps I could see his chest rising and falling in shallow breaths, but it was hard to tell through the smoke-laden air.

Triumph was almost instantly overthrown by panic and guilt. _What had I done?_ If anyone had seen, if a single soul should found out about my abilities, then I was as lost as the mutants in all those playground stories I heard. Never before had I lost control quite as violently; on one or two occasions, I'd been close, and sparks had visibly flown from my hands, but those were the easiest to hide under desks and sleeves. My mother would frown at the singed fabric later, but never questioned it. I was odd, but never abnormal.

But now I couldn't go back, not ever. Even as I climbed wincing to my feet, more of the boys began to roll around and groan, a few opening their eyes to squint through the murk. They would be able to guess, even if I was long gone before they properly came to their senses.

I hovered for a few precious seconds, still unsure of what to do, where to go, the guilt of what I'd done weighing me down like lead in my pockets.

"H... Help," one of the boys gasped to the sky. "Help."

The voice was enough to turn me around and send me limping for home, without a second look back.


	3. Chapter 3

Going in the next day felt like tiptoeing barefoot over barbed wire. I knew I could have feigned a temperature if I wanted, but the act of staying at home would only increase suspicions, and encourage whisperings to spring into life beyond my ears. There was a blunt edge of excitement there too; I wanted to see how they'd react to me now that they knew I wasn't the scrawny weakling they'd once believed me to be. A tiny arrogant fraction of myself wanted to stroll in and _dominate_. To be someone that people would fear, and therefore respect. I was quick to scold myself on such thinking, and just focused on making it through the day unnoticed. And then the day after that, and the day after that.

So that's why I found myself limping amongst a crowd of school kids the very next morning, a dull, thudding ache pressing into my ribs as a reminder of the thick purple band of bruises circling my stomach as a memento of yesterday. A new bag bounced against my back with every step, the old one having been abandoned on the pavement as nothing more than an ashy rag. I tried to control my gait, to walk smoothly so as not only to divert attention, but also to make the point that they hadn't hurt me when deep down I knew they had mortally wounded me, and once society saw the bloodstains they would come for me with jagged teeth and flaming eyes.

The ring of melted tarmac was still there to be seen by all, and had drawn quite a crowd, people peering over each other's shoulders to gape without ceremony down at the reformed ripples and footprints that now cut into the pavement, and the molten dribbles of tarmac that now hung over the edge of the curb like icing on a cake. I stood amongst them and made the appropriate gasps of "Ooh!" and "Aah!", instead already regretting coming in, and fighting the urge to be sick.

School wasn't much better. The teachers looked shifty and distracted, and ended up whispering anxiously with colleagues instead of teaching us at all, which unfortunately left us free to whisper too. I sat stock still with my head bent, looking for all the world as if I were midway through a particularly difficult maths problem, whereas I was straining my ears, turning them this way and that like satellite dishes in the hopes of picking up a faded radio signal that might feed me some news.

A boy across from me claimed that his brother had seen a mutant with fire blazing out of its eyes, incinerating everything that stood in its path much to the disbelief of his neighbour. Another swore that he heard screams and saw a wall of crackling blue flames. Everywhere, whispers of _mutant_ and _fire_ and _death_, but not a glance my way. I could almost have laughed at the irony of the very thing they feared being seated right in their midst, a fox smuggled into a chicken coop. And very soon, feathers were bound to fly.

The teacher returned, but instead of returning to quadratic equations, he wearily announced that five boys had been found the previous evening in quite a bad way, and had been taken to hospital, with two of them immediately being placed in intensive care. "No one knows what happened," he announced, eyes scanning the host of worried faces before him. "If anyone happened to see the event, we strongly urge them to step forward and give evidence. This is a serious matter that must be resolved as quickly as possible." As if sensing the oncoming storm of panic, he continued hastily. "Naturally, steps will be taken to keep students safe, but I feel I need to make it clear now that this wasn't the work of... of these supposed _mutants._"

_Liar_. I could practically smell the staleness of his statement, and it was clear that no one else bought it either. Sure, there was no definitive proof that mutants actually existed. They were the stuff of garbled nightmares, monsters that had somehow stumbled out of someone's dreams and into the real world through word of mouth, and 'genuine' sightings were few and far between. Hopefully, for my sake and all the others I believed were hidden out there, that streak would continue unbroken, so that we might find peace within the ranks of our enemies. That was the one thing that kept me driving forward, a dream that hung at perilous heights that I might reach if I were to struggle hard enough.

Perhaps, in the end that's what made the truth far more bitter to swallow.


	4. Chapter 4

**So sorry it's taken me this long to upload - Writer's Block is a cruel mistress! **

A few days trailed by, and as the disaster continued to go unresolved, so my confidence grew. Perhaps it was possible I would remain undiscovered after all, and could continue an unobtrusive existence; already the regular flow of the day had been clogged to a trickle due to the story on everyone's lips. Lessons were practically non-existent, and those that were still running eventually gave up and became social events instead, spawning grounds for fresh gossip and breaking news, which were really just the same facts, only chewed up and regurgitated in a slightly different way.

I got bored, careless even, raising my head a little higher in the sudden absence of constant abuse. Deep down I knew the last thing I should be doing right now was drawing attention to myself, changing in a way that would surely attract my peers' concentration, and therefore their suspicions. On the outside, however, I didn't care. If anything, I revelled in my new found freedom. No one could prove a thing now that my mutation was tucked safely away again next to my heart, feathered wings folded away out of public view. And this time, I felt more in control than I ever had before; the wave of energy I had released meant the building pressure in my chest had lessened greatly, and I could breathe a little easier without worrying about what would happen if I 'overflowed'.

This feeling of being untouchable was quickly brought crashing down. A week had passed, and I'd settled back down, my panic slightly abated by the lack of evidence traced back to my name, and the lack of evidence full stop. None of those in hospital were in any state to speak, and the one or two who'd managed a statement were barely comprehensible. For once, I felt comfortable in my own skin. And then the news came that sent the whole school skewing to one side from the impact. One of the boys, in fact the very one who'd forced his tongue down my throat, had died suddenly in the night. No warning, nothing. Now that a reasonably simple attack had turned into a murder inquiry, the school was set blazing afresh with an unforeseen heat as students' hackles were raised that someone should dare harm one of their own. The amount of police traipsing regularly around the grounds were doubled. Any sort of solace I'd found was destroyed in a single blast, and I was on a higher alert than ever before.

The guilt was crippling. I'd never properly hurt anyone before, and to send five people into hospital had been a roundhouse kick to the system, but now I had _killed_ someone, and it was like someone had cut my spinal cord in two with a pair of blunt scissors. I stumbled around like a broken marionette, my head buzzing with a numb sense of guilt, and anticipation for the justice that was sure to root me out. I may have hated the guy, but he sure as hell hadn't deserved to die. I never even knew his _name_. He was just... the guy. The bully. The watch-out-here-comes-trouble. The face on the end of a fist. It had never properly occurred to me that he might have a life as well that was worth protecting, a family, feelings even.

It's one of those funny phenomena where you think that you're the only intelligent life form on the planet; it doesn't register how complex and unfathomable every other human being around you is because you're too focused on your own thoughts and your own path to bother seeing anyone else. And my mutation seemed only to make this heightened isolation worse, perhaps subconsciously allowing me to see others as inferior because of this genetic glitch that they lacked. Because their minds were so simple and careless and _open_; they did not hide, they walked proud, and the only way not to feel unworthy was to pretend deep down that it was they who were at fault.

But this time it was my fault. I was the monster who killed a guy out of frustration, a pretty mean one at that, but that argument sank pretty quickly the moment I used it as a defence against my conscience. Over and over again, incessantly on a loop, all I could hear was _It's your fault, it's your fault, it's your fault. _Even my own brain was turning against me in its throes of guilt. It got so bad at times that I actually wanted them to find me out just so that I wasn't the only one fighting under this stifling burden of knowledge. At least then my mind might become blessedly quiet once more.

My unfortunate wish came true the next day, because that was the day that they finally found a witness.

Why she'd never come forward before remained an inexplicable mystery, but at the news of a death she'd finally managed to draw on some deep reserve of courage and knock timidly on the door of the headmaster's office, her story ready to spill from her lips at the slightest provocation. And not only could she describe the attacker down to what they'd been wearing, she also had _photographic_ _evidence_.

You might therefore be able to understand why I was terrified.


	5. Chapter 5

The news spread faster than the handcuffs were slapped onto my wrists. That look of disgust that I abhorred so much was everywhere I looked, in every narrowed eye and clenched fist. The 'm' word wasn't so much as breathed, but I could smell it in the air, see it blaring like a siren in every kid's mind, saw it in the way the principal flinched when I turned my gaze to him. Like I was something dredged up from a sewer, a rat with bloodstained teeth. _Murderer. Freak._ Everywhere I turned, humanity glared back with unflinching hatred now that they knew that I was one of _them_. Even the policeman manhandling me into the back of the van did so delicately, twitching back once I was in place, and wiping his hands discreetly on the front of his uniform when he thought I wasn't looking, as if I were riddled with disease. Unclean. A clear message: _Stay away. _The mesh door was locked shut, and then the external van door, shutting out the sea of hostile faces and enclosing me in the dark. I let out a shaky breath of relief, and curled up on the floor, as far from the driving compartment at the front as possible, and tried to prepare myself for what was going to happen next.

Court, prison, all places I'd never been. Would I even get to go there, to hold the same liberties as a human? Or would I be singled out by my new mutant status, executed in some hidden facility, or handed over to the CIA to be experimented on, dissected. The more I thought, the worse the future looked. And using my powers to escape would only result in more trouble, more paperwork and handcuffs, maybe even more deaths of innocent men left dripping red from my hands. I couldn't do it, I just... couldn't. I groaned, and cradled my head in my knees, willing myself to just stop _thinking_. All I could possibly do now was to sit and wait.

So I did. I sat and waited for what felt like a good few hours before they finally hauled me out, a few of the officers screwing up their noses like I smelt bad. _Thanks, guys. Subtle_. A few cold, tiled corridors later, I was shoved into an anonymous interrogation room, and told abruptly to wait.

Hmm. More waiting.

Instead I paced, taking in the bland white walls, the brittle blue carpet underfoot, plastic chairs and a laminated table that seemed to have been stapled to the floor, presumably for the interrogator's safety. Goodness knows what I might do. A mirror took up one of the walls behind me, and I couldn't help but smirk at the sight of it, the familiarity of it from evenings of watching cheesy cop dramas. I couldn't help but pull a few faces for the benefit of those most likely watching, my usually varied selection greatly reduced due to my hands still being cuffed, before finally collapsing into a chair to stare at the ceiling. I focused on keeping my breathing steady, my mind smooth and glassy, a puddle the second before you jump. This was what they wanted, for the silence to unravel me before a cop so much as opened the door. This room, this moment, that was what would decide everything that happened next. The next move on a chessboard, drawing out the inevitable checkmate.

They eventually deigned to send me an officer, a fifty-something with greying hair and tired eyes, the sort who regarded the world from behind his glasses with the weary patience of having seen everything before. Well, maybe not quite _everything_.

"Are you Henrietta North?" He began with the basics.

"Yeah."

"Sixteen years of age?"

"Yeah."

He frowned, and shuffled a little in his seat. "I must say, I find this case..." He struggled for a suitable word. Several decades in the force, and I was probably the first to render him speechless. "...special."

_You could say that again._ I smiled politely, and waited for him to continue.

"There have been serious allegations made against you, kid, one of murder, and four of assault, possibly even of attempted murder." He tipped himself forward a little, and I was suddenly reminded of small children sharing secrets. "Do you have anything to say on the matter?"

I stared into my hands, mouth clamped shut. Willing his eyes to be anywhere but on me.

I heard his chair creak, and then the rustle of a plastic bag. I looked up, only to see a blurry representation of myself pressed onto paper. "Know anything about these?"

The photos. _Shit_.

"Um..."

"An eyewitness took these," the officer continued, a note of triumph in his voice. "Do you deny that this is you in each of the pictures?"

I shook my head.

"And these figures, are they the boys who are now in hospital, with one dead?"

I nodded.

He tutted, drumming his fingers on the table. "Things aren't looking good, are they?"

I wished he'd stop pointing out the obvious when the same thoughts were already swirling around my head.

"Now how about you tell me what happened?"

I squirmed, head ducked to avoid his insistent gaze, but there was no point staying silent when the photos on the table said it all. They'd find out either way, and it was best if it came from me first, undiluted and first hand. "I... I was walking home from school, as I normally did." My voice wavered with the fragility of smoke – translucent, seconds away from trailing away into obscurity. But as I continued to talk, my resolve hardened, and my words grew stronger, took on a strange sort of authority in that tiny white room. "They attacked me. It was something of a routine, I... expected it, really." I smiled bitterly. "Being quiet never really got me accepted by the other kids. Anyway, it was the same old routine – kicking, name-calling, taking my bag from me. Usually I can take that sort of thing, I'm so used to it, but..." I fought to speak past the sudden lump in my throat. "... he, he kissed me, touched me. That was new, and I... well, I didn't like it, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't make him stop."

"This being the boy who's dead?" There was an element of gentleness to his voice now; I felt that if I appeared to notice it in the slightest, it would vanish as quickly as it had appeared. "And the others?"

"They helped. Held me down, egged him on, that sort of thing."

"And?"

This was it. I was on eggshells now, and the slightest movement would crush any chances I had of remaining hidden within human society. True, the school was now buzzing so brightly with the news of a mutant amongst them that even a few of the officers had begun to believe them. But if I could twist the tale somehow, admit to the crime without divulging my method...

I shrugged helplessly. "You know the rest. I got mad, struck out. I must have blacked out or something, because the next thing I knew was that they were all out on the ground."

At this he beat the table with the flat of his hand and broke out into bellows of laughter so loud that I cringed back into my chair. When he eventually finished, he was wiping tears of mirth from behind his glasses. "Oh, that's good, kid, that's very good, but I'm afraid I'm going to need better than that."

"What do you mean? It's true, I don't know what happened-"

He snorted. "Please."

"I've as good as confessed to everything!"

"As good as." He raised an eyebrow. "Don't think I don't know what you're trying to pull, 'cause they're all trying to pull the same trick day in, day out, and believe me when I say that I don't buy it." He nodded conspiratorially. "Don't get me wrong, I'm rather impressed. You call the _unconscious_ card, and suddenly no one can push charges. What if someone else did the killing whilst you were lying there all helpless and innocent? What if you were framed?" He shrugged, and the grin slid from his face. "But I'm afraid you're going to have to try a lot harder."

I stuck to my guns despite the sickening lurch of my heart. "I said I don't remember," I repeated stubbornly.

"Alright, then maybe these will jog your memory." He shoved the photos forward, and again I was confronted by the naked truth of what I'd done. "What I'd really like to know about is _this_." He gestured to the shimmering blue wall around me in the picture, too blurry to be properly identified. Through the layers of photos, it could be seen to expanding, with several of the boys caught mid-air in one shot. "It's got all our best scratching our heads."

"No idea." I squinted at the photos with mock puzzlement, even going so far as to hum in a musing manner. "God knows."

"Still got amnesia, huh? Well tell me this, missy. How was it that each one of the boys involved sustained at the very least severe second-degree burns? Are you really expecting me to believe that they somehow spontaneously combusted?"His leer was one of complete arrogance; he thought he had me well and truly cornered.

I paled, but said nothing.

He sighed, and flopped back into his chair. "You'd better start talking soon, otherwise things are going to get a whole lot worse," he said, his voice low. When I failed to respond, he sighed again, moving towards the door and gesturing for me to follow. "Perhaps a night in a cell might give you some time to start remembering," he called over his shoulder as a pair of guards emerged from behind me to grab my shoulders and march me forwards. As if I were going to put up a struggle. I felt lost and alone in this place, a mere thing to be churned through the system as quickly as possible only to be deposited in some distant prison for so many years like a scrap of rubbish in landfill. If anything, I was glad of the support; my legs felt like they were going to give out at any second.

The cell was as much as I'd expected. A small, tiled box with an orange mattress in one corner, and a chemical toilet and washbasin in the other. A light strip submerged me in bright whiteness, so that everything around me took on an artificial, almost surreal air, like it would all unexpectedly crumble away to be revealed as some wildly elaborate magic trick. The echoing slam of the door was horribly final, and I was suddenly all too aware of my own breath, the walls pressing in on me from every angle, and the deep, deep cold pressing into my bones. My head already throbbed painfully from the pulsating brightness that filled the room to bursting, the metallic tang of the brittle air enough to send my stomach roiling and bucking. Somehow I managed to stumble to the mattress and curl up with my face pressed into the wall in an attempt to block out everything, to pretend that it was all okay and that in reality I was at home, in the familiar warmth of my room. Though the light bleeding through my eyelids and the chill raising a cold sweat on my skin only served to pierce such a dream with the brusqueness of a pin deflating a balloon, I only clung to my own naïve conceptions with an even stronger conviction that things would once more return to the way they were, the way that they should be. It was like my own life amongst hundreds of thousands of others was a single puzzle piece, its edges meaning that there would only ever be one designated space for me to fit into in the entire universe. But now my edges had been remoulded and reformed, and I no longer fit where I felt so strongly I was supposed to slot into the the grand scheme of things. Where did I go now? Was there a special me-sized slot in some dark dungeon somewhere, or was I destined to float outside of the interconnectedness of the human hive to be discarded on a pile of dud pieces, dreams that just hadn't _fit_?

I couldn't sit quiet and accept that. Be pinned down for keen observation under the neatly-inked classification of 'mutant', or 'murderer'. Surely I was more than that, a living, breathing contraption of flesh and bone just like the rest of them, a soul clothed in skin seeking for a way to leave my mark on this world?

But what could I do? To the rest of the world, and most of all to myself, I was dangerous, and officially a killer - and that was a tag that one did not easily dodge without a decided lack of evidence and a very good lawyer. Neither of which I had.

Bleary, half-baked plots at escape swam around my head with the same dreamlike fuzz as the light contained within my cell; they faded in and out of existence, so that one palpable idea I clutched at hopefully one second would leave me flailing at thin air the next. The few I managed to hold onto varied between the wildly laughable, and the reasonably seaworthy that lacked the Mission Impossible flourish I was hoping for. Plus what I was going to do once I'd finally evaded the deft grasp of the 'Fuzz' was an entirely different kettle of fish that made me feel ill just by thinking about it.

So I pushed everything from my head and attempted to make myself comfortable – which is easier said than done, what with the mattress having the cushioning ability of a cactus – in order to put a couple of hours sleep under my belt, at the very least, for what was to follow.


End file.
